from the do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do dept

Like any giant, pampered duopoly, AT&T claims to loathe regulation when it has even the remotest potential to hamstring anti-competitive behavior (like Title II on the net neutrality front), but is perfectly fine with it when it protects the company's long-standing stranglehold on the United States broadband market. One of many glaring illustrations of this is in Kansas, where the company recently wrote but failed to pass SB 304, which, like nearly two dozen similar laws around the country, would prohibit towns and cities from wiring themselves for broadband -- even in cases where nobody else will. From the bill:

"Sec. 4. Except with regard to unserved areas, a municipality may not, directly or indirectly offer or provide to one or more subscribers, video, telecommunications or broadband service; or purchase, lease, construct, maintain or operate any facility for the purpose of enabling a private business or entity to offer, provide, carry, or deliver video, telecommunications or broadband service to one or more subscribers."

Like many of these bills, if you then look closer at the bill's definition of "unserved," you'll find it includes very expensive and capped satellite and wireless broadband, making it incredibly hard to gain approval:

"Unserved area” means one or more contiguous census blocks within the legal boundaries of a municipality seeking to provide the unserved area with video, telecommunications or broadband service, where at least nine out of 10 households lack access to facilities-based, terrestrial broadband service, either fixed or mobile, or satellite broadband service, at the minimum broadband transmission speed as defined by the FCC."

Facing an immensely uncompetitive duopoly between AT&T and former Washington Post run CableOne, the city of Chanute, Kansas has been looking to build a citywide fiber network capable of offering 1 Gbps speeds at around $40 per month. After defeating AT&T's attempt to pass new regulations hamstringing the project, Chanute now finds themselves face to face with a 1947 ma-bell era law that requires companies get permission from the Kansas Corporation Commission to sell bonds to fund such telecom projects. With the KCC likely to approve the request, AT&T lawyers have jumped in to intervene, according to the Wichita Eagle:

"Any decision made by the KCC could impact AT&T’s business operations in the area, which is why we asked to intervene in the proceeding," the company said in a written response to questions from The Eagle. “AT&T remains interested in both broadband issues and the work of the KCC."

As I've noted previously, AT&T's also in the process of going state by state paying asking state lawmakers to gut any and all remaining consumer protections (like laws requiring they continue offering 911 to the elderly) so it can back away from aging DSL markets it doesn't want to upgrade. In Kansas specifically, AT&T has promised locals they'll be awash in all manner of miracle broadband improvements, if only they eliminate the Kansas Corporation Commission’s consumer protection regulations and minimum quality-of-service standards. Well, at least the ones that apply to AT&T.

Again, just so we're clear, this is the same company that insists that absolutely any regulatory effort to protect consumers from duopoly power is the very worst sort of government over-reach, but has absolutely no qualms about using government over-reach and regulation to make sure broadband prices remain high and service quality continues to suck.

from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept

As we've noticed in the past, if there's a place to start fixing U.S. broadband competition, it's the nearly two-dozen state protectionist broadband laws written and passed by the nation's incumbent ISPs. Said laws either hinder or outright ban towns and cities from building and/or improving their own broadband networks, even in cases where local private companies refuse to. In several instances, the laws even prohibit government collaboration with private companies in any way.

The laws are usually passed under the pretense of protecting communities from their own financial missteps, with assorted industry mouthpieces like Marsha Blackburn playing up the failures of a few select municipal broadband projects. Of course, like any business plan, these ventures can be built on solid or rotten frames, and several have been quite successful. In contrast, these protectionist laws take local choice away entirely, replacing it with mechanisms that do little more than insulate the nation's lumbering broadband mono/duopoly from competition of any kind.

Fortunately, in the last year or so, these laws have started to see some renewed public attention as projects like Google Fiber have people clamoring for faster, cheaper broadband service.

Colorado's 2005 state law hindering community broadband bills was pushed for by local incumbents CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) and Comcast, which, like AT&T, have a long and quite sleazy history of passing awful laws, trying to sue such operations out of existence, or engaging in misleading disinformation campaigns (like telling locals their taxpayer money will go toward subsidizing porn). In Colorado's case, the 2005 law fortunately included provisions allowing locals to build networks if they call for an election. Last week, Boulder and six other communities voted to move forward with the idea of building their own networks.

Comcast is busy in Washington trying to maintain a clean facade in order to get regulatory approval of its $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable, so it didn't challenge the efforts, something that helps explain the campaign's success:

"How were they able to secure such a big victory? There might be some factors at work that are bigger than even Colorado. Comcast, the state's largest cable provider, did not fight the referendum, perhaps because it is focused on getting its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable approved in Washington. (Comcast declined to comment for this report.)"

Like so many technology issues (net neutrality springs to mind), this issue of community broadband has somehow been caught in the partisan politics team cheerleading wormhole, even though letting a giant corporation write your state laws and erode local authority simply to protect its mono/duopoly revenues isn't something either Conservatives or Progressives would support in a sane world. Refreshingly, a lot of the community revolt against these laws currently occurring in places like Colorado, North Carolina and Tennessee is being championed by Republicans and Democrats alike, who collectively (though belatedly) seem to have realized that better, cheaper broadband ultimately benefits everybody.

Earlier this year, FCC boss Tom Wheeler stated he'd be using the FCC's authority to ensure "timely" broadband deployment to dismantle portions of some of these laws, though the net neutrality debate appears to have put the issue on the back burner. That's a shame, since we've long pointed out that net neutrality issues are only a symptom of the deeper issue: a lack of competition. Dismantling idiotic laws purchased by ISPs to maintain that status quo is the very first place we need to look if that problem is ever going to be seriously addressed.

from the preach-it,-tom dept

The big broadband providers have all been spinning a yarn for a while now pretending that there's widespread competition. A key partner in this has been the FCC, which for years has helped spread this myth by pushing out totally bogus broadband data. If you want a good laugh, go over to BroadbandMap.gov and type in your address -- and discover a bunch of bogus claims about broadband which you really don't have. The speeds are inflated. The services are inflated. It includes mobile data broadband, despite it being priced much, much higher and with very low caps and limits -- and speeds that no one truly considers to be broadband but, that doesn't stop the big broadband players from using that bogus data to claim there's tons of competition.

It looks like maybe, just maybe, the FCC is going to be getting out of the business of furthering this bogus narrative. FCC boss Tom Wheeler gave a very interesting speech today, in which he spoke out about the lack of any real competition. Not only that, he didn't use the FCC's old bogus definitions of broadband. Instead, he made it clear that when we're talking about real broadband most people have no competition. The FCC released this chart in conjunction with his speech:

Every part of that chart is useful, because it doesn't just blindly say "broadband" and lump in a bunch of crap that isn't broadband. It shows there may be some (still not much) competition at very low speeds, but as you get up to real broadband speeds, competition basically disappears, with most people having only one option (or no options!). Past FCC's have lumped all this data together in a misleading way to pretend there's a lot more competition. It's good to see Wheeler clearly admit that there isn't -- and that this is a big problem.

Wheeler makes it clear that 4 Mbps may be the official FCC definition of broadband, but it's not really broadband with today's internet:

The bar on the left reflects the availability of wired broadband using the FCC’s current broadband
definition of 4 Mbps. But let’s be clear, this is “yesterday’s broadband.” Four megabits per second isn’t
adequate when a single HD video delivered to home or classroom requires 5 Mbps of capacity. This is
why we have proposed updating the broadband speed required for universal service support to 10 Mbps.

But even 10 Mbps doesn’t fully capture the increasing demand for better wired broadband, of
which downstream speed is, of course, only one component. It’s not uncommon for a U.S. Internet-connected household to have six or more connected devices – including televisions, desktops, laptops,
tablets, and smartphones. When these devices are used at the same time, as they often are in the evenings,
it’s not hard to overwhelm 10 Mbps of bandwidth.

And consumer demand is growing; today over 60% of peak-time downloads are streaming audio
and video. While today that video may be for entertainment, other applications are right behind. For
instance, if we are to tackle healthcare costs, high-speed broadband video for remote examination,
diagnosis and even surgery is important. If our students are to get a 21st Century education, high-speed
broadband to the classroom is essential. And, increasingly, that high-speed will be in both directions

And, he finally admits that wireless broadband is not a real competitor:

We have great hopes for wireless as a potential substitute for fixed broadband connections. But
today it seems clear that mobile broadband is just not a full substitute for fixed broadband, especially
given mobile pricing levels and limited data allowances. We welcome, and we must encourage, the
development of new technologies that can bring greater competition and more choices to consumers.

Furthermore, Wheeler says he recognizes how many other problems are created when there is no real competition in the broadband market:

The simple lesson of history is that competition drives deployment and network innovation. That
was true yesterday and it will be true tomorrow. Our challenge is to keep that competition alive and
growing.

Of course, some of us have been saying exactly that for years, while wondering why the FCC was doing nothing to help it -- and, actually, often helping to enable consolidation, rather than competition.

Wheeler also notes that while Google Fiber and other experiments have clearly driven big broadband players to increase investment (not decrease it), Google Fiber and a few similar players are few and far between with very limited footprints.

On top of that, he points out that the switching costs are too high. Even if you have choices, if it's a pain to switch from one to the other that makes you captive to the broadband provider you've signed up with -- and apparently he wants that to change as well.

But even two “competitors” overstates the case. Counting the number of choices the consumer
has on the day before their Internet service is installed does not measure their competitive alternatives the
day after. Once consumers choose a broadband provider, they face high switching costs that include
early-termination fees, and equipment rental fees. And, if those disincentives to competition weren’t
enough, the media is full of stories of consumers’ struggles to get ISPs to allow them to drop service.

Okay. So all of that was very good to see, and actually quite refreshing from the FCC. But there's the big question that remains: we've seen FCC people claim we need more competition, but they've done little to actually make that happen. And... that's where Wheeler's speech begins to fall down. Then it devolves back into lip service. Wheeler says the FCC will protect competition where it exists, will "encourage" greater competition where it is needed, will work to "create" competition where there is none and where that's impossible, will "shoulder the responsibility for deploying" broadband. But, what will that actually mean in practice?

Wheeler has talked about preempting bans on muni-broadband, but that needs to become a reality (even as some of Big Broadband's friends in Congress have sought to block it). He doesn't really mention anything about net neutrality or reclassifying broadband under Title II -- which would actually give the FCC more power in this space. He doesn't say anything about the Comcast, Time Warner Cable merger, which would clearly (despite what those companies claim) limit competition (not directly in a market by market basis, but in creating a large dominant player in negotiating deals).

Not that anyone actually expected Wheeler to tip his hand on any of those things before an official decision is made, but it's one thing to talk the talk -- and the talk was good -- but to actually walk the walk? It's been a long time since we've seen an FCC willing to make the tough decisions.

from the walk-softly-and-carry-a-ream-of-paper dept

There's probably no better way to announce that the broadband service you're providing is inadequate than the mayor of a town feeling compelled to write an apologetic letter to tourists, apologizing in advance for the lousy connection (or the complete lack of one).

As a guest in one of our wonderful Tusayan hotels, we know that like our residents, you have expectations in today's technology age of being able to easily and consistently access the internet highway during your stay in our community. Again, like our residents, we understand your frustration with the inconsistent strength of the broadband signal, or even total lack of an ability to connect. It is an issue that we have to deal with on a daily basis due to a lack of sufficient signal from our primary service broadband provider, CenturyLink. What bandwidth we have coming into the entire community has been severely over-subscribed (sold to too many users for the small signal strength available) and thus the poor quality of connectivity in our community. The situation is NOT due to a lack of effort or desire to provide you a quality service by the hotel where you are staying. It is due the lack of availability of broad bandwidth from CenturyLink.

The Town itself has been working for many months to try and resolve this situation by working with several entities to bring in a consistent and reliable service to meet not only our residents needs, but to also provide the level of service that we feel our guests and visitors to the Grand Canyon deserve. Hopefully we will be able meet those needs in the near future. Please understand that the issue is beyond our control as a whole community and not just this individual business and bear with us and we work to join the internet highway with quality services.

In the meantime, enjoy the reason you have come to our community, the Grand Canyon in all its magical and powerful beauty. We very much appreciate you choosing to stay in Tusayan and hope that you will also enjoy our great rooms, food & beverage services and the wonderful people and staff that call Tusayan their home.

Respectfully,

Greg Bryan Mayor Town of Tusayan

That CenturyLink's connection is indeed lousy has been confirmed by Grantham.

Unfortunately I can vouch that service throughout the area surrounding the national park was rather bad anywhere we went. In the national park itself service was actually pretty good, but I gather that is because the NP has it's own AT&T contract that avoids using the CenturyLink backhaul.

Grantham also wonders what purpose this letter ultimately serves: whether it's to push CenturyLink to the bargaining table, or hoping that the negative attention will draw bids from competing services. Either way, there's no shaming quite like public shaming, and CenturyLink is getting its shaming from the top man in town.

Mayor Greg Bryan said he was not encouraged by his own findings. Using his business, the Best Western Squire Inn, as an example, he said conversations with Qwest regarding Internet expansion began nine or ten months ago. In order to provide fiber optics in town, Qwest said they would need around $1,000,000.

More details from that council meeting indicate that Qwest/CenturyLink was looking for a 10-year commitment for a certain number of Tusayan businesses before it would move forward with expanding its capacity -- on top of the $1,000,000 investment from the city itself. Mayor Bryan said that Qwest was refusing to move forward until it received more service renewals for Tusayan businesses.

Further notes from later council meetings indicate CenturyLink has been unwilling to budge from either its long contracts or $1 million in funding from the town.

Robbie Evans, Tusayan Fire District, suggested that the Council look into the Arizona Corporation Services in reference to CenturyLink providing the town with broadband service. CenturyLink is supposed to be serving the town with internet and the Arizona Corporation Services can be contacted if CenturyLink does not.

CenturyLink is unresponsive to a solution as it is costly to install. There is current legislation that would allow ADOT to lay conduit along highways or allow vendors to lay conduit in the right away. The Town may need to lay aside money for the next several years to address this problem. Council Member Rueter would like to see fiber laid as wireless broadband would only address the problem temporarily as the need for use increases.

To that end, it appears the city has now abandoned hope of working this out with CenturyLink and is seeking bids on fiber optic lines. While considerably more expensive (this 2013 meeting's minutes contain a quote from NI Solutions of $1.7 million), this may finally give the town a connection that won't disappoint incoming tourists and, at least at this point, doesn't seem to come bundled with a demand for a 10-year contract with a single provider. (NI provides "open-access" fiber connections which can be utilized by any service provider.)

On the other hand, the situation doesn't seem to have progressed much past the estimate stage. Mayor Bryan's letter indicates things are still at a standstill with CenturyLink, and no competitor has offered to take over the territory. Bryan's shaming letter also indicates that CenturyLink's purchase of Qwest didn't improve local service, despite earlier hopeful comments that the new providers were "more attuned to help[ing] rural Arizona areas." This lack of movement possibly suggests that no bids are in the range the town is willing to spend, or it could be that CenturyLink is actively blocking competitors from receiving additional federal funding, something it has done in the past. Bryan's move, however, is a smart one (if not a little self-interested -- he owns a hotel in town): put more eyeballs -- especially those of people who drive the town's economy -- on the problem.

from the speak-up-now dept

There were rumors yesterday of a few ridiculous and extreme attempts by some in Congress to attach some anti-net neutrality amendments to the big Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act. And while the most ridiculous proposal failed to appear, instead, it does appear that Rep. Marsha Blackburn is pushing an amendment to block the FCC from preempting laws that ban municipal broadband. The big cable companies have fought municipal broadband for ages because they hate competition. Cable and telco lobbyists have succeeded in getting such laws passed in a number of cities and states, with some politicians directly admitting that the bills were written by those lobbyists. And while there have been some disasters in munibroadband efforts, there have also been some amazing successes, providing truly competitive broadband that also helped force competitors to up their game.

That's why we were happy to see FCC chair Tom Wheeler make it clear that he was willing to use the FCC's powers to preempt laws blocking competitive broadband. This would be a very good use of the FCC's power to encourage real competition and innovation. Blackburn's amendment is all about stopping that, and making sure that your broadband is as expensive as possible, with no real innovation or competition on the way. Blackburn, of course, is also the politician who constantly screams about how terrible it would be to "regulate the internet" when it comes to net neutrality, but seems to have no qualms at all "regulating the internet" when it comes to other things, like SOPA (she was one of its main supporters). She's also claimed that "fair use" and "transparency" are just buzz words and that we need much stricter intellectual property enforcement.

But when it comes to actually making sure you have a competitive broadband market? She's totally against that. You would think, given that she's from Tennessee, that she'd be aware of the massive success of muni fiber over in Chattanooga. It's not her district, but it's not too far away. Perhaps she should take a visit and see if the residents there would support her stomping out competition and fast broadband.

Blackburn's amendment is to be voted on today, so groups like EFF, Public Knowledge and Free Press are urging folks call Congress to oppose Blackburn's latest bad idea.

from the long-overdue dept

For fifteen years now I've watched as phone and cable duopolies lobby to pass draft legislation designed to keep broadband uncompetitive. Specifically, in more than a dozen states these protectionist measures either hinder or outright ban a town or city's ability to wire itself for broadband (either alone or with a private industry partner) -- even in cases where nobody else will. If the laws don't ban such efforts outright, they force anyone looking to build a broadband network to jump through layers upon layers of bureaucratic hoops, during which the regional duopolies with limitless budgets harass the efforts with lawsuits and negative publicity campaigns (I've seen ISPs hire push pollsters to tell locals that a government-built network would ban their religious programming).

The worst part of these bills is that at their base they're simply duopolists buying laws that keep towns and cities from making regional infrastructure decisions for themselves, whether that's building their own core fiber network or developing a public/private network build partnership. Carriers get to have their cake and eat it too; they're not going to build you better broadband networks, but they're not going to let anybody else do it, either. Some of these projects work, some don't (it depends on the specific business model), but if the country is actually serious about improving broadband competition, these miserable bills are the very first thing that need a long, hard look.

For many years these bills were quickly passed without much debate, public scrutiny and absolutely no tech-press attention. All too often, when they were noticed, they were defended using traditional partisan tropes. Locals simply trying to get connected by any means necessary are usually vilified and portrayed as supporting "government meddling with industry." It's a shame, given that, like so many technical issues, there should be nothing partisan about protecting your local rights. Fortunately, with Google Fiber's entry into the market I've seen a renewed flurry of attention on these bills, in large part because several would have impacted Google Fiber's expansion, and Google Fiber, as I've noted, appears to have captured the imagination of the public.

In Kansas, for example, cable operators recently ran into a bit of a chainsaw when they attempted to ban towns and cities in the state from running their own fiber or working with partners like Google Fiber (operating in Kansas City). SB304 claimed to allow such efforts if they targeted unserved customers, but then sneakily defined unserved as someone unable to even get satellite or a cellular dial tone, ensuring that nobody would get that designation (a pretty common trick to make the bills seem more reasonable). In Utah, SB190, one such bill pushed in part by regional incumbent CenturyLink, also won't be surviving this year thanks in part to the new attention Google Fiber (who purchased a network in Provo) has brought to the issue.

A few years ago, these bills would have flown through state legislatures with nary a mention. Not only are new bills starting to fail more regularly under heightened public awareness, I'm starting to see -- for the first time in my many years covering the industry -- pushes to roll back some of these ridiculous protectionist measures. In Tennessee, for example, there's four different bills in process that would roll back such incumbent-friendly bills, and they're coming from both sides of the political aisle. Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica, who has been doing an absolutely fantastic job lately making these important issues interesting for readers, notes how local ISPs quickly complained about the sea change:

"We are particularly concerned about four bills that have been introduced this session," Tennessee Telecommunications Associations chief Levoy Knowles said in an announcement. The TTA claimed to be presenting "concerns of rural consumers" but are more worried about the potential of losing customers. "These bills would allow municipalities to expand beyond their current footprint and offer broadband in our service areas. If this were to happen, municipalities could cherry-pick our more populated areas, leaving the more remote, rural consumers to bear the high cost of delivering broadband to these less populated regions," Knowles said."

Yes, god forbid you'd have to face a new competitor and adjust your business model accordingly; you might even have to work with a local government to determine what works best in each region! Meanwhile, Google Fiber's recent announcement to help 34 cities in nine regional markets examine local fiber needs should bring greater attention to the issue. Google intentionally targeted regions like North and South Carolina, where regional incumbent Time Warner Cable passed protectionist bills a few years ago (on their fourth try). It only took fifteen years, but we're only just starting to see people realize that perhaps letting your regional duopolists write laws dictating what you can and can't do for your own community might not be the best idea.